The purpose of this paper is to establish clearly whether the
Bible makes correct teaching, sound doctrine, or (to use the
historic term) orthodoxy, necessary for the progress of
the Christian life. The case will be argued here on the grounds
of the teaching of the New Testament alone, only because the vast
mass of supporting data in the Old Testament only strengthens the
argument and must await another paper.

The case requires both definition and reasoned argument
leading to the conclusion, and will be dealt with in two stages.
We will ask: (1) how does the New Testament present the doctrine
of doctrine?; and (2) what is the relation between doctrine and
life?

The Problem

We live today in the most privileged and free civilization in
the history of the world. We have total freedom of worship, and
of propagating our faith. Never before in Christian history have
we had so much of this worlds goods at the disposal of the
saints of God. Never before have we been so inundated with
material and spiritual blessings and opportunities. We have every
imaginable advantage of education, time and resources at our
elbows, dozens of libraries, millions of books, including vast
collections of reformational texts of theology, Bible exegesis,
commentary, and sermons.

Yet, despite more free time than ever to spend how we wish,
the average member of our evangelical churches across the nation
still cannot explain to a Jehovahs Witness why he or she
believes in the Trinity, the average Calvinist can not explain to
an Arminian what mortification of sin is, the average
Protestant can not explain to a Catholic how justification is
distinct from sanctification.

Many believers spend years in ostensibly orthodox evangelical
churches, and never hear one sermon on the relationship
between the Trinity and worship, never hear one sermon on the
dominion of sin or grace, never one sermon on even
such a fundamental commonplace as the security of the believer.
As a result of this neglect, there are fewer and fewer people in
the pews who even expect to find any connection between
correct doctrine and correct practice.

It seems to be more and more assumed that correct practice is
so easy to come by that it need not depend on correct doctrine at
all, that doctrinal orthodoxy is really just "a head
trip." Most of the people attending our churches seem to
function as if somehow sincerity will do instead of truth.

This leads us to:

The Head
vs. Heart Heresy

It is very common in these days of so great an embarrassment
of riches in the matter of books and religious freedom, to hear
mention of the mysterious gap supposed to exist between the
"head" and the "heart." It is assumed, of
course, that the mind, the intellect, is the head, while
our faith resides in something called the heart. It is
therefore possible to have head knowledge without heart
knowledge, and so miss out on the reality of faith.

Likewise, a mysterious gap is thought to exist between theory
and practice which we are somehow unable to bridge.
People who ask too many questions are accused of being on a
"head trip" and admonished to "be practical."
Their problems are said to be solvable somehow by having the
right kind of experience rather than by getting their
questions answered from the Bible in the form of doctrine. Their
problems are to be solved through understanding their emotions,
by improving relationships, through serendipity, through
counseling, through a new commitment, or perhaps even by
"getting to know God better." But never can personal
problems be solved through doctrine, since mere theory is
not thought of as being "practical."

It is even suggested or implied that "there are really no
answers" in the final analysis, since the ultimate questions
dissolve at last into mysteries. We do not need answers; we
need to grow up and learn to accept the paradoxes of life! True
Christian maturity is said to be measured by our commitment in
the face of final paradox rather than by any kind of knowledge.
People who want answers are just immature, thats all.

It is not the purpose of this exercise to refute these
absurdities as completely as they deserve. We shall have to be
satisfied just now with the response that against all forms of
modern irrationalism, the Christian religion is recognized by
specialists in comparative religion as being by far the most
intellectual religion of all; that the New Testament puts a heavy
priority on the regeneration of the intellect (witness the
Pauline emphasis on the intellect in the prayers for the Ephesian
and Colossian churches in the first chapters of their respective
epistles); that the Bible in both the Old Testament and the New
makes it perfectly plain that the term heart means the
seat of the intellect, or the mind as our capacity to reason;
therefore all the problems we face are to be solved first by
allowing the Bible to change our minds about the truth,
and then by learning what Gods answer is to our
problem, as God defines and explains both problem and answer.

The spiritual breakthrough comes when, in humble dependence on
Gods mercy, we accept His account of the matter and obey
what He says to do about it. The results are predestined to be
successful and to infallibly meet the needs of the believer
sooner or later. The Bible itself calls this process "making
disciples," and the primary method is said to be by
something called teaching. This program was set forth in
the last words of Jesus as recorded in Matthews Gospel, in
the Great Commission.

The word teach appearing there, occurs twenty times in
the Gospel of Matthew alone, and Jesus is called Teacher there
about ten times. If we look at the whole NT, the two nouns for teaching
or doctrine occur over fifty times, while the verb to
teach occurs over ninety times. The word teacher appears
at least fifty-eight times. Half a dozen other related words
appear on another twenty occasions.

This makes a total of over 240 references in the NT alone to teachers
teaching doctrines. When we recall that the well-known
references to born again and regeneration occur in
less than twenty verseswe can only conclude that there is
an extremely important subject being set forth in Scripture,
which we may call the Bibles doctrine about doctrine.
Surely a subject which demands far over two hundred references in
Scripture must be one of the most important things in the Bible.

The
Doctrine of Doctrine
in the New Testament

For convenience, we will concentrate on the Pastoral epistles,
1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. The two NT words for doctrine may be
considered synonymous for our purposes, and occur in these three
epistles seventeen times. The verb appears another six times. A
term meaning able to teach appears twice, and teacher three
times.

There are therefore at least twenty-eight passages in these
letters alone which will show us how important Paul thought
doctrine to be. They may be classified as those passages (a)
commanding or exhorting us to teach and be taught, and we shall
refer to these as positive passages; and (b) those verses
which warn against false teaching and teachers, which we shall
call the negative verses. We shall consider the negative
verses first.

(a) Negative:

To begin with, certain verses contain repeated warnings of the
damage done by false doctrine. The very first occurrence of the
word doctrine in these epistles warns Timothy to resist
false doctrine by proper instruction of those involved in
teaching it (1 Tim. 1:3).

Anything incompatible with the apostolic deposit was to be
actively resisted. According to 1:10-11, this deposit covers
moral matters in essential harmony with the ethical content of
the OT Law. Everything else is "contrary to sound
doctrine." In 4:1, specific teachings are described as
"doctrines of demons," including forbidding Christians
to get married, and spiritual vegetarianism. Paul traces much
false doctrine to demonic influence in other epistles also (See
Gen. 3; Eph. 6; 2Cor. 4:4; 1Cor. 10:20; Rom. 1:21-32; Rev.
9:20-21).

In 2 Tim. 4:3, the final apostasy is introduced as being the
result of a turning away from sound doctrine to a multiplicity of
popular teachers who tell the people what they want to hear and
substitute mythology for divine revelation. Myths are exactly
what the Bible does not contain, according to Peter (2
Peter 1:16).

Titus likewise warns of those who wreck whole house-churches
with false doctrine which generates revenue for them and
damnation for their hearers (1:11). Paul says (1:9) that a key
responsibility of a Christian leader is to challenge and refute
false doctrine from anyone who presents it.

Elders are to be active in opposition to these things and ever
vigilant against them. There is no mistaking Pauls attitude
here: by exhortation (by actively challenging error when
presenting the biblical alternative) and by reasoned argument
(intended to convince opponents) sound doctrine is to
prevail. The dreadful alternative is suggested in verses 10-16,
that those deceived will be rendered useless for good works.

At this point in the study something needs to be said about
the relationship of reasoned argument to evangelism.
Unfortunately today, we blithely accept the common but artificial
distinction made between preaching the gospel and Apologetics.
Evangelism and Apologetics are treated as separate subjects in
the Bible College or Seminary curriculum and the division has
determined our modern practice.

One would think that because God has given the Church such
specialists as Josh McDowell, Francis Schaeffer and Cornelius Van
Til, therefore we do not have to give any attention to
apologetics personally; besides, isnt it really for
intellectuals only? Isnt it a subject for seminarians?
Besides, everyone knows you cant argue someone into the
kingdom

Over against this dead weight of evasion, we should place the
NT attitude to the defense of the faith, somewhat as follows:

First, we should note that Apologetics is an essential part of
the Gospel; all the speeches in the book of Acts contain
apologetic arguments based either on the OT prophecies or Jewish
history, or recent events such as the coming of Christ. Read
Peters speech in 2: 14-40 or 3: 12-26 or 4: 8-12 or
Stephens in 7:2-53 or Pauls in 17:22-31, to mention
only some of the examples of apologetic material in NT preaching.

Second, the task of defending the faith is commanded in 1
Peter 3:15 and Jude 3, and illustrated by almost every NT
document; most of Pauls epistles contain arguments against
various errors of his own day. Apologetics is therefore not an
optional extra, but an integral part of the apostolic mandate.

Third, we have the methods of the Apostles throughout Acts.
Consider the verbs used in 17:2 (reasoned with them),
17:17 (disputed daily), 18:4 (reasoned and persuaded),
18:11 (teaching), 18:13 (persuaded), 18:19 (reasoned),
18:28 (convincing), 19:9 (disputing daily), 19:26 (persuaded),
and 19:33 (defended himself), from a mere three chapters.

Paul links Apologetics consistently with Evangelism in both
his writings and his practice. In Phil. 1:7, he describes his own
work as being "the defense and confirmation" of the
gospel. Clearly, Apologetics is for unbelievers a defense of the
truth, and for believers a confirming of the apostolic message.

We must conclude from even so brief a survey, that the
apostles argued with unbelief as well as preached to it, that
they expected their arguments to convince at least some hearers,
and that they saw both proclaiming and defending the gospel as
two sides of the one coin of evangelism. No disjunction exists
here between head and heart, for gospel truth is to be addressed
to the mind!

(b) Positive:

The Apostle Paul identifies himself as "a teacher of the
gentiles in faith and truth" (1 Tim. 2:7) and indicates that
at that time he was not allowing women to teach or to arrogate
teaching positions to themselves over the existing (male)
leaders. Apparently in such a male-dominated society as we know
the ancient world to have been, Christian women were bypassing
the orderly procedures of church administration by rejecting the
then all-but-universal male leadership which had probably been
too slow in making practical Pauls injunction about
"neither male nor female in Christ" (Gal. 3:28). He
warns that these women must learn the same way the men did,
"in quietness and submission" and not "usurp
authority over the men" in teaching positions.

The warning example of Eve transgressing because of false
doctrine deceiving her is to be noted. A woman cannot teach
anyone unless she is "capable of teaching" (3:2), and
she cannot teach without first learning. Therefore, "let the
woman learn" is a mandate roughly equivalent to
"educate your women too," and is in harmony with
Jesus radical answer to the Jewish refusal to teach their
women the Law, when he accepted Mary as a student disciple
"at his feet" and warned Martha that her sister had
chosen "the better part" which would never be taken
away from her (Luke 10:38-42). Paul agreed with Jesus
attitude, apparently.

In chapter 4, verses 6, 11, 13, and 16 are an interesting
group of verses. In order to be a good minister, Timothy is to be
"nourished up" on good doctrine in harmony with the
apostolic deposit. The alternative again is "fables" or
myths. Verse 10 rebukes idolatry, since we serve the "living
God," the final preserver of all people, and especially the
Savior of believers. This he says, we must teach. In verse
13, the (public) reading of the Scriptures aloud was vital for
the life of churches in which so many were illiterate.
Exhortation then, involves presenting the challenge of the truth
and "the doctrine." Only by taking heed to the doctrine
(v. 16) can both the teacher and the learners (i.e. disciples) be
kept safe.

Elders may spend most of their time "teaching the
word" (5:17) and are therefore to be paid "double
honor." The epistle closes with three verses (6:1, 2 and 3)
in which it seems that "the doctrine" can be blasphemed
as well as "the name of God," as a result of unworthy
lives. These things, he says, we must "teach and
exhort." Paul sees teaching and challenging the faithful as
two sides of the one coin of properly communicated truth.

In verse 3, Paul equates his own teaching with "the words
of our Lord Jesus Christ" as "the doctrine according
with godliness." Those who "teach otherwise" are
motivated by pride and other sins which, he warned, will
eventually "drown them in destruction and ruin" (vs.
4-9).

Second Timothy is, if anything, even stronger. Again, he opens
the subject (1:11) by identifying himself as an apostle sent to
announce the gospel as a teacher of the nations. In 2:2 the word anthropois
means people, human beings in general, and cannot be
restricted to males. It links up with the mandate to educate
women in 1 Tim. 2:11 and is a collective mandate to educate both
male and female Christian leadership in doctrine, thus preparing
them to teach.

There is more of this kind of thing in 2 Timothy. In 2:24
Gods servants are warned not to be "macho" (yes,
thats the Greek word! Cf. Titus 3:2 also) but to be gentle,
patient, "apt to teach." The word for this is didaktikos
and means having a didactic or doctrinal emphasis.

In verse 3:10, Paul notes that the consistency of his doctrine
and his life is part of his exemplary Christian leadership. This
is what it means to "live godly in Christ Jesus" and he
adds that we can expect it to bring persecution. The inconsistent
and hypocritical believer is no challenge to heathenism! A godly
consistency in which life is controlled by truth is a terrible
affront to the false autonomism of the unbeliever and he cannot
leave it alone. A "form of godliness" is fine, but
"the power thereof" is an irritant to unbelief (3:3-7).

The classical spot for the doctrine of doctrine is 2
Tim. 3:16. "All Scripture is God-breathed" says Paul,
and as a result is profitable for doctrine. This term is
then expanded by the rest of the verse into reproof (telling
us when we are wrong), correction (telling us the right
alternative), instruction in righteousness (or ongoing
discipleship training, paideia or education). The purpose
is then described as being "in order that the anthropos of
God may be properly equipped, totally and completely equipped or
furnished with a view to every good work."

No more comprehensive statement could be made of the perfect
sufficiency of Scripture. When it comes to the place of doctrine
in the life of the believer, its sola scriptura all
the way. The alternative is the disaster outlined in 4:3-4, in
which sound doctrine is replaced by a relativistic mythology, as
in modern liberal theology, and the popular recent New Age mysticism.

Paul sums up Timothys task in 4:2, as "Proclaim the
Word, be on the spot every chance you get, since all seasons are
in season. Reprove sin, admonish the sinner, challenge to
godliness. The method is by patient and persistent doctrinal
teaching; and nothing less will do" (my paraphrase).

In the letter to Titus, Paul expands on the need for
doctrinal leaders. In 1:5-7, he notes that he ordained elders
in every city to be overseers (episkopoi). They are to
hold fast to the faithful word of doctrine (v. 9) in order to
challenge and convince contradictors through sound doctrine. In
2:1 "sound doctrine" is the foundation of life for
elders. The principle subject of this letter is the
responsibility of Christian leadership. The chapter break at 2:1
gives the false impression that the subject has been changed from
leaders to those being led. There seems to be no adequate ground
for assuming this.

Paul began in 1:5-7 to explain the basic qualifications for
generic leadership. The leaders are then related by their
overseer status to the younger women and younger men to whom they
minister. It is particularly mentioned that teaching is part of
an older womans ministry (2:3-4). In 2:6-7, the younger men
are warned to be uncorrupt in their doctrine. In 2:9, slaves are
to decorate the Christian doctrine by their godly lives, in view
of the blessed hope of Christs coming, towards which we are
all moving (12-13). In verse 13, God is said to be the ultimate
teacher of his children, educating them (paideuo) toward
consistent holiness.

And all this is in the pastoral epistles alone!

Necessity of
Sound Doctrine

The Bible teaches that the Holy Spirit is the agent of
Gods regenerating of the human soul, effecting the change
by the instrumentality of the Word of God (John 1:12-13, 3:5-8,
Titus 3:5, James 1:17-18, 1 Pet. 1:21-25, etc.). This process of
renewing the soul into the image of Christ continues all through
the believers life until its consummation in the very
presence of Jesus himself (John 15:3, 17:17, Rom. 12:1-2, 1Cor.
2:9-16, 2Cor. 3:17-18, 4:4, etc. concluding with 1 John 3:2).

The Bible uniformly presents itself as an instrument by which
the eternal God reaches down into time by His sovereignty to
effect those results which are to manifest His eternal plan or
word. His Law-word for creation (Gen. 1) and His Law-word for
redemption (James 1:18) work the same way: God speaks and the
desired result is effected (Isa. 55:8-11). Sometimes the effect
is by a direct action, and sometimes it is accomplished by a long
chain of causal law-structures. In either case, the result is
sure and manifests the divine will with irresistible certainty.

It follows, also irresistibly, that one of the links in that
chain is such a human activity as preaching the word and
teaching. Holiness being conformity to Gods word, sound
doctrine is a necessary and indispensable step in the process,
and false doctrine has a similar power and effect in the other
direction.

The human mind is a flexible, dynamic function of our created
humanness which at any instant is either reacting to true or
false elements of doctrine. At every point where our
consciousness touches and interprets the outside world, it does
so in terms of presuppositions, axioms, or assumptions. Only then
does it proceed by those necessary and unavoidable thought
processes which unify and interpret our ongoing experience.

This process of intellectual interaction with the creation is
the interpretive function which is our exercise of human prophethood
under God as the original interpreter of His own Creation. It
even continues while we sleep, in the subconscious realm, from
which dreams sometimes rise to consciousness. We never stop
interpreting reality.

When Adam and Eve fell, they lost the ability (but not the
responsibility!) to act as Gods vice-regents over Creation.
God created them in His image to function as prophets, priests
and kings.

As prophet, Adam was to hear Gods word of
interpretation and, assuming it to be true, extend that
interpretation to all of creation as he encountered it. He was to
reinterpret reality in terms of Gods prior exhaustive
interpretation, part of which was revealed in the direct words of
special revelation. This task of reinterpretation in terms of
Gods revealed interpretation is called the task of the
prophet. The realm of the prophet is truth, knowledge,
exhortation and proclamation.

In other words, a truly creational Epistemology presupposes
Gods exhaustive knowledge, and in faith responds
accordingly. When Adam and Eve made themselves their ultimate
reference-point and began with their own autonomist
presuppositions, they had thereby automatically failed as
Gods viceregents in the realm of interpretation; they had
failed as prophets.

Likewise, our first parents failed as priests. They
should have represented God to each other and each other to God
as pre-redemptive mediators in the realm of Ethics. When
Adam saw that his wife was encountering false doctrine he should
have acted as her prophet and challenged the heresy Satan was
offering.

So should Eve have prophetically challenged Satans word
as being inconsistent with Gods prior interpretation.
Neither of them did this. Nor did Adam go to God to intercede for
Eve, as priest in the realm of ethics, thereby obediently
responding to God in righteousness. They both rejected
responsibility for each other. We might note incidentally here,
that the presupposition of autonomy or freewill did not
lead to a sense of responsibility, but rather undermined it.

Likewise, they fell in the realm of Ontology, or Being,
not presupposing the Creator-Creature distinction that underlies
holiness of ones being. In making themselvesrather
than their Creatorthe reference point for meaning, they
lost both the ability and the authority to act rightly as
vice-regents or kings under God over the Creation, for
they were now servants of another (Rom. 1:25 and 6:16). As in a
game of chess, the rules control what is possible in the game. In
the process of thinking, the rules are the axioms or
presuppositions we start with. And nobody escapes
presuppositions. Presuppositions determine everything.

The offices of prophet, priest, and king were
recovered for the believer in the person of Christ, just as they
were lost in the person of Adam. The functional elements of the image
of God lost in Adam are available to us in Christ, Himself
the Image of God (2Cor. 4:4, Col. 1:15, Heb. 1:3), as we are
being renewed by the process of redemptive regeneration (Eph.
4:24 and Col. 3:10, 2Cor. 3:8 and 4:4, and Rom. 8:29 with
12:1-2).

These verses show how the qualities of holiness (of our
being, or ontology,) righteousness (of our action, or
ethics), and truth (of our interpretation, or
epistemology) are being daily renewed in the believer through the
redemptive activity of the Word, thus restoring us as kings,
priests, and prophets in these three realms, respectively.
Holiness, righteousness, and truth are thus the attributes of
Gods image which we lost in the Fall and recover through
regeneration.

How vital, then, that our conscious mind be filled with
Gods redemptive interpretation of reality! We must
deliberately seek to know and accept what God says about
everything in order to understand reality aright, in order to
interact with His Creation correctly. Only on the basis of
Gods revealed presuppositions, and of Gods ultimate
rationality, of Gods revealed interpretations of reality in
Scripture, can we know truth at all, since we are supported
ultimately by Gods exhaustive consciousness of Himself and
of His creation, and of us in particular as His beloved children.

It is this view of reality which Scripture variously calls the
truth, or sound doctrine, and even "the faith
of Gods elect" (Tit. 1:1). Because God cannot lie
(Heb. 6:18), He cannot contradict Himself (2 Tim. 2:13). It
follows that sound doctrine has the necessary attribute of being
wholly consistent with itself, granting, of course, its base in
revelation as the starting-point and God as its ever-present
integration-point. This does not mean, of course, that all the
results of the human task of theology will be always perfectly
consistent, but it does mean that the believer has the hope of
consistency always before him, and Gods promise of
sanctification supports our growth in this as in other areas.

Theory and
Practice, Doctrine and Life

We said at the outset that attention would be given to the relation
between doctrine and life. Something has already been said
about how doctrine fits us for the tasks of prophethood,
priesthood, and kingship. These offices are the formal structures
or models for our obedience towards God by which we create and
influence culture, i.e., contribute to the Kingdom of God as we
pray for it in the Lords Prayer that "Thy will be
done, thy kingdom come," etc.

Gods redemptive reign is therefore manifested on earth
to the extent that believers develop a redemptive culture or
civilization. The Christian Church is the pilot plant for the
Kingdom. Here the seeds of redemptive cultural influence are
cultivated, and the institutions of a redemptive civilization are
structured, the principles of the Kingdom formulated for practice
in the world at large outside the Church.

The Church is to the world redemptively what the Garden
of Eden was supposed to be to the rest of the earth before the
Fall. As Adam and Eve were to be obedient in fulfilling the cultural
mandate as prophets, priests, and kings over the earth, so
expanding their governance over the whole earth to subdue it and
rule it, so the believer is to bring all of life on earth under
the Lordship of Christ. All culture, whether economics, politics,
arts, or the sciences, every thought must be made captive to the
Lord Jesus (2Cor. 10:5).

The above is just as true for the premillennialist as it is
for postmillennialist. For the amillennialist too, the
climactic redeemed culture of the coming Kingdom will be in the
New Heavens and the New Earth, transmitted there through the
General Judgment in the hearts of believers and fulfilled in the
rewards reaped by the elect. For the postmillennialist, the
Kingdom grows in history by a slow but inexorable growth until
the Millennial Kingdom is progressively established on earth.

Again the principles and fruits of the redemptive civilization
are communicated from year to year in the hearts of believers and
manifested in progressive historical victory over the Curse. For
the premillennialist, the preservation of the fruits of
cultural obedience again has its continuity into the Kingdom
after the Second Coming in the now glorified hearts of believers
who are resurrected, judged, and rewarded with tasks and
positions in the Millennial Kingdom. In all three eschatologies,
cultural continuity from pilot plant to manifested Kingdom is
mediated and preserved from age to age by the renewing of elect minds
(as per Rom. 12:1-2 etc.).

We have noted already (first two paragraphs of section V,
above) that Gods Law-word for Redemption is as sovereignly
efficacious as it was for Creation. The Word of God comes to us
in special revelation as a direct, inscripturated, propositional
communication, providentially preserved in history as the Canon
of Scripture. It is this word that Paul exhorts Timothy to
"preach" (2 Tim. 4:2).

Its collective content is "the doctrine" (2 Tim.
3:16), and by giving constant attention to it, Timothy was told
that he would save both himself and his hearers (1 Tim. 4:15-16).
For the Apostle Paul, the question was not whether one would
communicate doctrine or not, for it was impossible to function
without doing so; the question was whether it would be sound doctrine
or not.

Conclusion

It seems then, that in the Christian vision of reality, theory
and practice form an indissoluble unity; all theory has an effect
in practice and all practice, whether true or false, is the
practice of true or false theory. It follows of necessity then,
that it is impossible to function as a believer at all without
sound doctrine. At least in the Pastoral Epistles, as we have
seen, sound doctrine is an essential part of the apostolic
mandate and is the principle pastoral tool.

Author:Dr. Bob Wright - has taught at the high school,
college and graduate level, studied in Australia and England, and
has a Ph.D. from Iliff Seminary here in Denver. He and his wife
Julia are co-directors of the Aquila and Priscilla House Study
Center, patterned after Francis Schaffers, LAbri
Fellowship.